On April 21st at Empty Bottle the coolest benefit concert ever will take place and proceeds will go to the Nicest Man in Chicago. That man is David Thomas and he has cancer, but has had some success with treatment. However, he has been dropped from insurance and has a massive amount of medical bills. The event features music from Amalea Tshilds, Follows, and The Record Low. They will also have a bunch of cool items to auction of from local shops and publishers. It is the Kick Cancer In The Balls Benefit and tickets can only be purchased at the door for $12.

The best 5 bucks you'll spend all week will be on a beer at the Laurelthirst...while Blue Giant is knocking the electric blues piss outta ya for free!

The band will be holding down a residency at the LaurelThrist Public House from 6 to 8 p.m. every Wednesday in April...

Wait, wait, wait. "What's a residency?" asked singer and country guitar slanger Kevin Robinson. Well, it's where you show up and play to the people that are already in the bar. Okay, that sounds pretty good to The Robinsons and Co. because Blue Giant will be trying out new material and jamming with old friends alongside their normal arsenal of slide and steel guitars, and anything that you can strum in between. Bring a mandolin or banjo.

But honestly, Blue Giant doesn't strum. Sometimes it's mellow and folky acoustic, sometimes slightly psychedelic. Lots of Southern twang with a fiddle here, then electric riffs and ass-kickin' harmonica there - Bringing It All Back Home-era Dylan.

"Got to pay your dues if you want to play the blues, you know it don't come easy," sings Kevin Robinson.

But it's damn easy to enjoy Blue Giant for free.

- Chris Young

A country band in the original and truest sense of the term, you won'€™t find Crooks trafficking in piano bar anthems or boot scoot boogies. Not content to further clog CMT with radio-ready schmaltz, rural sentimentality, or nostalgia for a simpler time, these hounds are out to tree a different animal altogether. If you play a Crooks song backwards, you won'€™t get your dog, truck, and woman back. Though you might get your morality, humanity and sobriety. The good geologist, like the musicologist, knows that to unearth the best rock, one must look underground. And this holds just as true for outlaw country. So if you'€™re looking to wet your whistle in an undiscovered watering hole, give Crooks country a try. It'€™s just down the road apiece, off the well-worn path.

(this post taken from Crooks' post on our DIY Open Blog, check out other Open Blog posts in the Deli Kitchen. As for Crooks - check them out at Mohawk with James 'Slim' Hand, Friday, April 16th. Pic above by Davis Ayer)

Singer/songwriter, Margaret Glaspy came to Boston three years ago on a grant from the National Foundation for the Advancement of Arts. Since then, she’s been rocking the folk scene, regularly headlining at Club Passim, who has just given her an Iguana Music Award. As she settles into a Tuesday night residency at the Lizard Lounge for April, Glaspy talked to the Deli about the Boston scene, finding her voice as a songwriter and the power of acoustic music.

DELI: You come from California?

Margaret Glaspy: Red Bluff. It’s this tiny little town in northern California, kind of conservative and…interesting (laughs). We were definitely the weird family.

DELI: How so?

MG: It was definitely a small town vibe, lots of cattle and county fairs and rodeos and stuff…not that all that stuff isn’t great but we were kind of on a different path.

Read the whole interview by Jason Rabin HERE